A character, not a voice: tuning the narration in Bastion

We've already written about the excellent indie title Bastion, but when …

The much-anticipated Bastion caused quite a stir among readers when we first previewed the game, but one of the main concerns voiced in the comments was the fear that the narration would become tedious, or even annoying. We caught up with Greg Kasavin from Supergiant Games to ask about how they avoided the trap of too much narration, and how the voice was designed.

Actually, that may be the wrong word. Kasavin wanted to sure assure us that the narration was provided by a character, not just a voice. Here's how one of our favorite games at E3 became great.

"During development, whenever the narration did not enhance the play experience of Bastion, we would cut it. While we ended up cutting hundreds of lines, we kept thousands. We heavily iterated on this and other aspects of the game to get it to feel right," Supergiant Games' Greg Kasavin told Ars.

It wasn't just a matter of getting the dialogue right—there had to be a kind of flow to the narration. It couldn't simply be a voice that is constantly yammering away into your ear. This may sound obvious, but it takes a tremendous amount of work to create something that seems easy. "We set a bunch of ground rules around our use of narration in order to ensure it achieved the effect we wanted," Kasavin explained.

"For one thing, none of the lines ever repeat unless the player repeats certain content or replays the game, though even then we tend to mix it up to some extent. For another, from a writing standpoint, the narration is never relegated to play-by-play commentary, and instead is always there to deepen the player's interactions in the world, by revealing information the player could not have discerned on his own—even if it's about the narrator's own personality," he continued. "The narrator is a character, not just a voice."

Each lined was tuned to fractions of a second during production. It had to sound natural, and it had to create, and then build on, the atmosphere in the game. Pacing was also a concern, as players needed to feel like they were moving things forward in a way that was comfortable to them, without the narration pushing them along. "To that end, players who progress through the game more quickly won't hear as much of the narration, though they'll still get the main thrust of the story," Kasavin said. "The result should feel like it was custom crafted to each player's particular style."

I've been lucky enough to play the game for a good stretch already, and the narration adds a lot to the game without becoming annoying or overbearing. Plus, the story of the game itself is interesting: it was created by seven industry veterans who left their day jobs in the industry to live in a house in California while creating the games they wanted to play. Last year the game was accepted into PAX 10, a contest for independent games and a slot on the floor at PAX Prime, Penny Arcade's show for gamers. Even before they pitched the game to publishers at PAX, they chose Warner Bros. due to its interest and enthusiasm. Soon after, the game was announced as coming to the Xbox Live arcade.

"[Warner Brothers] has enabled us to have a big presence at events like PAX East and E3, which has allowed us to stay focused on development. Our relationship's been going great," Kasavin told Ars.

This is one of those great stories you find in the industry: passionate people put together a great game, it gets noticed by the right people, and maintains its strong and unique ideas through development. We can't wait to play more.

Bastion is coming to the Xbox Live Arcade this summer, with a PC release coming later in the year.

For a ton of info on this game you can visit Giantbomb.com and search for Bastion. They ran a series of videos with the developers that shows how the game was made and how it progressed. It's pretty in depth.

Really looking forward to this - lately it seems it's the indie scene who're getting all my attention. Partly it's the lower prices and reduced hardware demands (mortgage + wedding = not much ££ for computer stuff!), but also because their games just seem to have more 'soul'.

There're some strong parallels between the movie and game industries, big studios, lots of polish and high production values, amazing graphics, lots of sequels, rehashes and reboots vs smaller independent teams doing some really creative and original stuff. Kudos to Ars for covering both sides.

Shame this much investment in a really fine tuned narrator will never be mimicked in the larger production houses. I can just imagine a few games that already have a character on your shoulder that would benefit.

I'm not sure the gameplay is going to be my thing, but having seen a gameplay video of this in action before I think I'll get it just for the narrator concept which was really something to behold in action.

For anyone who still has a problem with the narrator, really: watch the gameplay video. It isn't like you think it is.

Yeah, it is really a great touch to the game. Check at Giantbomb, they have a 5 minutes gameplay video.

I am worried about the control. How will it work on the PC ? Will it be like Hoard in which a XBox 360 controller is recommended.

Don't most PC gamers have some kind of gamepad though? I always find the "I like consoles because I use a controller, not kb/m" thing weird since I assume most PC gamers have controllers. Sure, you're not going to play an FPS with one, but I'm also not gonna' drive around in GTA or play Super Meat Boy with my keyboard. Just seems like basic equipment for gaming.

RE XBLA: Yeah, I hate hearing that something is being released on XBLA first because that usually means a pointless delay in getting the PC version. Didn't Team Meat recently claim that debuting on XBLA was a bad idea, or that they should have got onto Steam sooner?

For anyone who still has a problem with the narrator, really: watch the gameplay video. It isn't like you think it is.

Yeah, it is really a great touch to the game. Check at Giantbomb, they have a 5 minutes gameplay video.

I am worried about the control. How will it work on the PC ? Will it be like Hoard in which a XBox 360 controller is recommended.

Don't most PC gamers have some kind of gamepad though? I always find the "I like consoles because I use a controller, not kb/m" thing weird since I assume most PC gamers have controllers. Sure, you're not going to play an FPS with one, but I'm also not gonna' drive around in GTA or play Super Meat Boy with my keyboard. Just seems like basic equipment for gaming.

RE XBLA: Yeah, I hate hearing that something is being released on XBLA first because that usually means a pointless delay in getting the PC version. Didn't Team Meat recently claim that debuting on XBLA was a bad idea, or that they should have got onto Steam sooner?

The keyboard and mouse setup is actually quite familiar to most PC gamers, in my experience. I played through all of GTA4 on my PC without a gamepad, and while I haven't played Super Meat Boy, I played the original Meat Boy. It was a Flash game. It used a keyboard for controls.